


babylon

by hyungcomplex



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Dimension Travel, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyungcomplex/pseuds/hyungcomplex
Summary: doyoung chasing taeyong across time, across lives





	babylon

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to j ♡
> 
> I thirst, I hunger, I spark, I burn, force and field, force and  
counterforce, agent and agency, push to your pull, parabola of will,  
massless mass and formless form, dreamless dream and nameless name,  
intent and rapturous, rare and inevitable, I am the thing that is  
hurtling towards you…  
\- _the love song of the square root minus one (i)_ by richard siken

**i // 1**

Doyoung is in love, and that is the beginning and the end of everything. When he first meets Taeyong, his new roommate, his hair is plastered wet and black against his forehead from the rain and he carries a red umbrella under his arm. Doyoung feels the miniscule black i on his left wrist begin to throb.

"You’ll catch a cold," Doyoung says, carefully. He can see centuries, lifetimes, in Taeyong’s eyes.  _ In retrospect, _ he thinks,  _ that was probably an omen. _ Of course, this revelation comes later, on another rainy day, in another universe.

**xxvii // 27**

This time, Doyoung has a tiny number 27 inked on his wrist in roman numerals. Taeyong has a strange glint in his eyes and a deadly black handgun hanging from the holster at his shoulder. 

He’s a regular at the restaurant in Berlin where Doyoung works, and his traitorous heart skips a beat the first time Taeyong walks in. His hair is a deep silver-grey, and he smiles with a hint more teeth than he used to. Taeyong is still a chatterbox, and he picks apart Doyoung with an easy, deceptive familiarity, persuading him to sit with him while he eats. He doesn’t remember him, he can’t. Couldn’t. Doyoung needs to remind himself of this, when his hand makes it halfway across the table towards Taeyong’s own. He’ll have time to learn him, again. Hopefully.

They fuck the first night they meet, and almost every night after that. Sometimes Taeyong comes to his apartment smelling of blood and gunpowder, but it’s not Taeyong’s blood, so Doyoung never asks.

Taeyong doesn’t say he loves him, so Doyoung won’t either, but Taeyong still lets Doyoung kiss it into the fragile ridges of his spine, night after night. He breathes it into the arch of Taeyong’s neck as their bodies move together, and they don’t speak.

One night, Taeyong runs his lips over the marks on Doyoung’s wrist, nips him with his teeth before soothing with his tongue, before he leaves him, and doesn’t come back.

**xxxii // 32**

Doyoung goes for physics this go-round. He has a lot of time, he still hasn’t found Taeyong, doesn’t feel his presence drawing him like before. He immerses himself in his books, in the Einstein-Rosen bridge, in the Kerr theory, quantum strings, parallel universes. None of it fits his situation perfectly, but he keeps going. The possibility of being able to explain it, whatever this is, makes Doyoung feel uneasy, but it’s not as if he’d ever be able to tell Taeyong anyways. Not now, at least.

In between studying and waiting for Taeyong to walk into his life, he writes it all down. Everything he could remember about the other times. He thinks about the threads of space and time warping and changing around him in the fabric of reality.  _ Am I moving through dimensions, or is everything else moving around me _ , he thinks, running his fingers over the numbers at his wrist.  _ Is Taeyong the traveler, and I'm the one staying still? _

He doesn’t find Taeyong this time, not really. Two years into his tenure at Berkeley, a pink-haired Taeyong walks into his classroom. Doyoung’s hands shake for the entire lecture, and he wraps his cardigan tighter around himself whenever he feels Taeyong’s eyes on him. Taeyong is a good student, nothing extraordinary. Doyoung grades him fairly, doesn’t look at him for too long, doesn’t allow himself to feel. Not even when he sees him kissing another boy outside the lecture hall. He thinks about the number on his wrist, hidden by his watch band, and goes home.

**viii // 8**

Doyoung grows up in San Francisco, watching starships being built across the bay. He leans over the balcony of his family’s apartment, and watches the sleek ships as the sun sets and lights them on fire for a few precious seconds. He looks up at the stars and sees the future.

On his 17th birthday, they start building a new flagship, and he watches it burn every day at sunset. They name her the  _ Enterprise _ , and he whispers it to himself as he lies in bed and stares up at the ceiling. He thinks about the Starfleet application file on his PADD, and buries his face in his pillow.

He tests into Starfleet Academy on his first try, at 18. His roommate is a sharp-tongued math whiz, proving theorems that have hotshots from all corners of operations and sciences breaking down in tears. His name is Ten, and he’s kind of an unbearable asshole. He looks at Doyoung like he’s been weighed, measured, and found wanting, and it irks him. He does his best to ignore Ten most of the time, and Ten does the same.

They only see each other in passing, Ten leading a different love-struck cadet around every week and pointedly looking away whenever he see Doyoung. It’s none of Doyoung’s business really, and he’s in a committed relationship with his studies anyways. 

Of course, one day, Taeyong is the love-struck cadet, and Doyoung finds himself at a loss for words. He skips class for the rest of the day, holing himself up in his room and skimming through his textbooks aimlessly. Ten returns to the room sometime after midnight, shucking off his uniform and throwing himself down on his bed. They don’t speak, but Doyoung can feel Ten's eyes on the back of his neck.

Surprisingly, agonizingly, Taeyong is the one who sticks around. He’s good for Ten, good at helping him relax, smoothing out his sharp edges. Ten gets better at managing his pride, and he and Doyoung are marginally more civil now. Doyoung tries to quell the flares of jealousy, rubbing at the black mark on his wrist when he feels that hollow ache build up in his chest.

And then the morning after the end-of-finals party, he wakes up at 5 am and finds himself in a hot tangle of naked limbs, on a messy pile of sheets on the floor of their room. He opens his eyes to find Ten looking right at him, eyebrow raised like a challenge, daring Doyoung to say something. Then Taeyong, Taeyong, shifts behind him, pressing a sleepy kiss to the back of his neck. Ten throws his arm over Doyoung's waist and goes back to sleep. Doyoung lies awake for hours.

Ten gets headhunted by various admirals, but ends up going for Command. "I want to pilot the Enterprise," Ten tells Doyoung fiercely, the old sharpness slipping out, "and I want you there to patch me up when things go south." Doyoung doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. Taeyong goes into command as well, choosing to be a navigator.  _ They look good together, _ Doyoung thinks. He tests right into Sciences with flying colors, getting assigned to medical almost immediately. His new blue uniform fits like a glove, and he wears it like a badge of honor.

**xliii // 43**

"Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down," is how Doyoung introduces himself this time, Taeyong's laugh ringing out at the reference. Taeyong is the perfect editor, equal parts cajoling and stubborn to counter Doyoung’s blatant disregard for deadlines and his own reputation. After three years of working together in London, they end up living together, too. 

"I'm protecting my interests," Taeyong says, "because one day you'll end up burning your house down and dying just to spite me." Doyoung scoffs, but says nothing. He doesn’t keep regular hours, but neither does Taeyong. It works. They trust each other, or something like that. 

Taeyong tells Doyoung long rambling stories with no beginning, end, or point. Doyoung shows Taeyong all of his work. Save for the notebook he keeps on his bedside table, for all the things he can parse from his memories about the other times. It’s still too raw, too unsure. He feels like he’s inviting trouble, though, when he goes back and scratches out all of the names. Names have power, he remembers. And of course, his sense for approaching trouble is spot-on.

One night, as Doyoung stands in the kitchen, drinking milk from the carton, he hears a noise from the hallway. Taeyong hates when he drinks from the carton. Doyoung freezes, bracing himself for Taeyong’s regular spiel about germs and bacteria, and his unbendingly firm opinions on sharing them, but -- he isn’t angry.

"What’s this?" Taeyong asks, a familiar black-bound notebook in his hand. Doyoung inhales slowly, carefully, trapping the air in his chest.

"A story. Just something I’ve been working on," he says. It’s not really a lie, either. Taeyong’s eyes light up, but he's quiet as he reads, the rustle of pages between breaths the only noise in the apartment. After a while, he sets the notebook aside. He rests his hands in his lap, and Doyoung can see him teetering on a mental tightrope in time to the rise and fall of his chest. He waits.

"It’s very sad. Beautiful, but tragic," Taeyong says, finally. "It works. I love it. We’re publishing it." Doyoung says nothing. He doesn’t trust himself to speak just yet. Taeyong touches his elbow, tentatively, then runs his fingers down Doyoung’s arm, over the ridge of his wrist. He moves closer, intertwining his fingers with Doyoung’s and pressing his cheek to Doyoung’s shoulder for a second, breath hot and teasing against Doyoung’s neck, before drawing away.

They exhale, out of sync.

**xvi // 16**

Doyoung wakes up, and does not feel the call. He cannot sense Taeyong's pull. Sometimes, Doyoung never finds him at all, but he prefers not to think about those times.

**xix // 19**

Doyoung finds himself in the middle of a war, and he’s on the losing side. He finds Ten again, and at first he doesn’t believe it. But it’s Ten, the same one, impossibly. He’s a fighter here, and Doyoung is a healer, again. Ten remembers everything, remembers Taeyong too, but they don’t talk about it much more than they have to. Doyoung isn't sure what he’d say even if they did.

One day, Ten comes back in a stretcher. Doyoung works on him all through the night, cursing at him to stay alive, damn it, as Ten snarls back at him, passing in and out of consciousness. Ten recovers, slowly, and Doyoung sleeps fitfully on the ground next to his pallet. On the third day, Ten raises himself up on one arm, and pulls at Doyoung’s tunic with his other hand.

"You have to find him," he hisses, and Doyoung opens his mouth angrily, falters. "I know you’re a traveler, idiot, you’re not the only one." 

Doyoung says nothing, reeling at this new information. Ten lies back and tells him about how time is not linear, but branches out, circles back infinitely, loops through itself and diverts its own course,  _ obviously _ . Ten travels too, but he started on the opposite side, at the end, and moves backwards. Doyoung runs his fingers over the red rings around Ten's ankle, and listens, gaining more new questions than answers.

In the morning, he wakes up, and Ten is gone, as if he never existed. At the end of the war, won through miracles that Doyoung doesn’t question, he receives a letter, in an angry black scrawl,  _ study theoretical physics if you get the chance sometime. _

**lvi // 56**

He’s in Seoul, again, and Doyoung thinks he’s figured it out now. Or, at least, he's got ideas. He’s had enough time to think about it, read about it. Dream about it. There’s the multiverse, all possibilities existing simultaneously. There’s reincarnation. There’s schizophrenia, too. So maybe he hasn’t figured it out, but it’s not important anymore. Taeyong is going to die, again, but this time, Doyoung sees it coming. Doyoung watches, and breaks his own heart again. He brings Taeyong red balloons, brilliant in the sterile hospital room, and Taeyong tells him the story of five friends who loved to sing, who grew up and grew apart, three of them leaving two at home, as they tried to find their own fortunes in the world. 

"How does it end?" Doyoung asks. "I don’t like sad endings _ . _ " Taeyong laughs and promises to tell him later. Later never comes, though, because soon after that Taeyong is coughing up blood, coughing up a few more days he could have spent with Doyoung. The balloons are garish now. Doyoung doesn’t go to the funeral.

**c // 100**

Doyoung meets Taeyong for the first time, for the second, twelfth, seventh, fifty-sixth, first time. He’s lost count, but not really. Every time he's met Taeyong is permanently etched into his brain. His heart doesn't skip a beat as he bows and introduces himself, again. He doesn't mind the hard work or the numbing exhaustion when he gets to be with Taeyong like this, all the time. 

Fast forward a few months, years, and they are standing on the stage together, under the blinding bright lights, the crowd’s screams rolling over them in waves. He turns towards Taeyong who grabs his hand, squeezes. Doyoung catches a glimpse of black on Taeyong’s left wrist. Doyoung feels an ache in his chest. The skin of his wrist is bare. Doyoung is in love, and that is the beginning and the end of everything.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is actually a minor rework of something i wrote a few years ago. i liked a lot of things about it so i decided to just post it and hopefully break through my nervousness re: posting on ao3. i'd definitely love to revisit the [25 lives](http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/mirror/25-lives/)concept again and try to do it more justice someday. also definitely maybe want to write some star trek au lol
> 
> questions, comments, concerns? pls let me know what you think @.@


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